The downside of technology is cheating





Jason Busby, a history teacher at Agoura High School, recently gave the Las Virgenes Unified School District board of trustees a glimpse into the future of education through a comprehensive— and sometimes startling—presentation and report.

Busby said teachers in the future will be challenged to give their students relevant instruction.

“The school is calling for a bold new approach to teaching,” Busby said..

“The real concern is relevance,” said Busby, adding that students will face different challenges when they graduate high school and college compared to earlier graduates. The job market, he said, has changed dramatically, with jobs being outsourced at an alarming rate to countries where cheap labor abounds.

Busby said he’s always told his non-college-bound students that they could always work at McDonalds, but even that option is shrinking, he said. A pilot program being tested in Oklahoma and Kansas allows orders to be forwarded to a central call center in Colorado.

Today’s jobs also have become increasingly technological, said Busby, which points to the need for a shift in educational strategies.

Busby said technology is affecting education by giving students new hi-tech methods for cheating. Today’s students cheat using text messages on their cell phones.

“The best defense against cheating is to create assessments that are based on thinking, not memorization and regurgitation of basic fact,” Busby said. “I won’t ask you to memorize the Declaration of Independence. I’ll ask you to analyze how it’s been used in other movements for independence since.”

Other technological advances on the horizon that might take cheating to new heights are “super sunglasses” that incorporate micro-video cameras and have the ability to translate foreign language text. Projection keyboards and even computer chips planted on clothing are other methods of hi-tech cheating.

Boardmember Terilyn Finders called for a renewed focus on integrity and an improved work ethic. She said that since students can cheat so easily, the shift has to be on “analysis, synthesis and evaluation” rather than rote memorization of facts.

Experts in education also predict that today’s focus on test-taking will have little relevance in the future.

Reconciling the federal government’s push for more testing is a challenge that Agoura High School is willing to accept.

“Schools in other parts of the country, who have made similar changes, report that their test scores have gone up, not down, even though some of them have eliminated multiple-choice testing,” said Busby. “Our expectations are higher than the standards.”


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